“If you want your wife to be a Goddess,
worship her.”
— Clairette de Longvilliers

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Worshipping Your Wife: 750-Word Digest Version

For those who, for whatever unaccountable reason, have not yet read the book, Worshipping Your Wife, here is a 750-word Readers Digest or Cliff Notes version:

WORSHIPPING YOUR WIFE: Six Steps for Turning Marriage Back Into Passionate Courtship

“Boyfriends need to understand that if women are worshipped, the world will be a better place.”—Nicole Kidman

“If you want your wife to be a Goddess, worship her.”—Clairette de Longvilliers

“The thrill is gone.”

It’s the lament of so many married couples. Husbands and wives drift apart, physically and emotionally, or maintain alliances of custom and convenience, keepers of a flickering flame.

Love has its seasons, as John Gray reminds us in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. It's folly to expect eternal springtime, perpetual romance.

But what if it's not necessarily true? What if love can be rekindled, even the all-consuming passion of first love? And not rekindled briefly, for just a season, but “ever after,” creating that fairytale future couples dream about when saying their vows?

That’s the extravagant claim of Worshipping Your Wife: Six Steps for Turning Marriage Back Into Passionate Courtship. Yes, courtship—because that’s when guys and girls find each other most mysterious and magnetic.

Here's the entire six-step program in a nutshell—nominally addressed to husbands, but most effective when hand-delivered by their wives (or girlfriends), with salty or salient passages underlined.

The husband needs to:

Step 1: Realize that "the thrill is gone" and that he wants to get it back

A man will do anything to win the woman of his dreams. Should he lose her, he will do anything to win her back. Why, then, is he not willing to do anything, on a daily basis, to keep her contented? Because husbands don't perceive that a wife can be lost if never again wooed or won, that marriage is also a crisis, deserving of extreme efforts.

Step 2: Save his sex energies for his wife

The dirty little secret is that passion doesn't ebb, magic doesn't vanish—not for most husbands anyway. Their fantasy life continues unabated, only focused away from their wives. With visual erotica a mouseclick away, too many husbands, while technically faithful, yield to imaginary infidelity. And, at the risk of sounding Victorian, chronic masturbation, solo and secretive, can rob a marriage of its binding energies.

Step 3: Make her his fantasy

The solution is for the husband to make his wife the centerfold of his inflamed imagination, as she was during courtship. When a husband begins treating her with that same homage, the deadening scales of familiarity will dissolve and he will see her restored to full, feminine mystery and radiance.

Step 4: Court her every day, attempt to win her anew

Let the dragon-slaying, and sonnet-making, and gift-giving continue. Also: In courtship, the man proclaims his romantic ever-readiness, but the woman decides when (or if) sex will happen. It is a wonderfully workable formula, attuned to the dynamics of male and female sexuality. Let the man be hopeful all day long, striving to earn or seduce ultimate favors. Let the wife initiate and announce the main event ("Gentlemen, start your engines!"). Sex will be better and hotter for both--and more frequent.

Step 5: Pamper her and pitch in around the house

Is it unmanly to pamper your wife? Is it insulting, or infantilizing to open doors for her when she's perfectly capable herself? Should a husband stick to gender-specific chores--washing the car, hauling out the garbage? The courtship model makes quick work of such debates: You can't do enough for her! And, in today'stwo-income marriages, the woman ought not be expected to tie on the apron the minute she parks her briefcase. Let her log a few after-work hours in the La-Z-Boy (with a magazine and a Merlot). It may pay erotic dividends later that night.

Step 6: Dare to be known by her

Most men aren't comfortable discussing intimate or emotional issues--even sexual fantasies. But the more a marriage returns to the courtship model, the more a husband's thoughts—and fantasies--turn to his wife during the day, the more he will have to share with her at night (or other private times). Opening up to her will serve to strengthen emotional and sexual bonding--and preclude any temptation for a "misunderstood" husband to unburden himself to another woman.

Summing up

“To me it’s pretty simple,” began a memorable post I found in a wife-worshipping message board. “It’s all about doing what I can do to make my wife happy. Because when she’s happy, I’m happy. It doesn’t take much once you get the hang of it. Every single day I just pretend we are dating and I try to win her heart.”

6 comments:

The problem is the D word. I do all these things for my wife, and still she doesn't take control of the relationship. How much longer will it take her to grasp the assertive attitude. If she will just show her dominant side, and I will be in fantasy land. I will keep trying but it is hard to change her. Because she doesn't want to change her thinking.

And "countrylefty," I am definitely going to check out your "obsequious husband" blog. If that is truly your nature, as it is mine, then why don't you proceed, stealthily or openly, to show it to your wife in ways that she can accept, and let things develop at her pace? Who knows "how much longer" it will take? In the words of fdhousehusband (whose blog is no longer available), "If you defer to Her on all things, do what She wants when She wants, and anticipate Her desires, you will have given Her that authority and She will learn to grow into the role. It will take time but it will come."

I think the idea that you can loose her for being a dick, can happen at anytime. My test for any relationship is to get in a car, preferably a small one, and drive for 8-10 hours per day, for maybe 2-3 days on a road trip. If you can be purely enthralled, fascinated and inspired by each other's presence, in the most of confining of spaces for hours on end, then it will last. I sign all of my e-mails to my lovely, YMIW. BTW, doing yoga together every day doesn't hurt the communication matrix either. I thoroughly love kissing my wife's ass. For the last 18 years of our marriage I have also cleaned the toilets and the bathrooms. This is sanctuary territory. I cook shrimp and rub her back for more connection karma. All is good, for I have found that people can be as beautiful as they are happy, and she is truly happy and beautiful . I am the luckiest man on the planet. Sincerely, MIW

Bob, Thank you for the Thanksgiving greeting, and let me return the warm wishes. No, I didn't serve my wife Thanksgiving dinner -- we went to some friends. But I did keep doing chores all day, including washing up endlessly as she and her cousin kept using more and more pots and pans in our kitchen. And, to surprise her (since it's also our anniversary), I may also wake up in the middle of the night and sweep and mop the kitchen floor.